Mare Imbrium
by Ashen Author
Summary: A series of character studies concerning the parts of each of the senshi that they don't like to admit exist. Not particularly backed by canon - more explorations than anything. Not horribly dark and tragic, but still serious. 1) Ami on being alone. 2) Minako and the loss of love. 3) Rei on victimization. 4) Makoto's memories.
1. Bereaved

I don't own Sailor Moon. I am, however, glad for the re-make that's being produced.

This project was inspired by a bunch of excellent character studies for the Dresden Files series done by Ninjana, especially the story _Duty_. They're on my favorites list, if you want to take a look.

* * *

Out of all of her friends, the one Mizuno Ami most envies is Makoto.

She wishes this were not so, and genuinely despises this part of herself, but is not self-delusional enough to deny it. There are times when an ugly vindictiveness will boil up inside her while speaking with or about Makoto, and it will leave her in a sour mood for the remainder of the day. Her usual therapy for herself is to—and she knows this would shock her friends if they knew—abandon her books for the remainder of the day and exorcise the darkness through either swimming or painting.

The problem with these feelings is honestly not who she envies, but what. Why. Ami does not envy Usagi's epic romance with Mamoru. She does not begrudge Rei her elegant beauty, nor Minako her brilliant charm. It isn't about looks at all. She doesn't envy Makoto's "talent", nor her strength, nor her charisma, nor her friends excellent domestic skills. She admires these traits, but never does she burningly desire them for herself.

Ami envies her friend's freedom.

In spite of herself and all the values she espouses, Ami Mizuno has occasionally wished she were an orphan.

The first time she put a name to this desire, she spent half an hour trying not to vomit, and then made Rei perform an exorcism on her. Her friend pronounced her clean of all influences, and tried to get Ami to talk about why this upset her more. Ami kept her peace, and the look in her eyes was enough to keep Rei from pressing.

Following her belief that knowledge is power, she made certain to check out as many psychology books as the limit allowed, and signed up for the next semester's psychology elective. It was a relief that she didn't fit the profile for psychopathy or an Electra complex, but it left her with the question of _why_.

Coming home from the library to an empty apartment and a note from her mother, she had an epiphany.

She wishes she were an orphan because if she were, not that much would change for the worse. She knows this is not at all realistic, but it certainly feels that way.

Ami has not spent any significant time with her father for approximately a decade, and while she feels she loves him, she isn't certain. One of her literature teachers espoused that, "to know is to love," and she isn't certain how much she knows about him. It's easy to tell herself that he has a habit of leaving his home messy and forgetting to eat when in the grips of inspiration, but she hasn't spent enough time to know how certain this is. He could be faking it if he doesn't feel like spending time with her that particular visit.

The paintings in her room suggest that he likes water as well—lakes, rivers, and sea-sides abound in his art, along with a few arctic landscapes—but are those what he enjoys painting, or merely what he is good at painting, or what sells? She's well aware that she's never seen him paint something from life. Ever.

Not even a portrait of her.

And ignoring her father's eagerness or lack thereof to spend time with her in any meaningful way, Ami knows that her mother's presence and influence in her life must be a major contributor to these feelings as well.

Or more precisely, again, her mother's lack thereof.

She can't begrudge her mother her job and duties. Saeko Mizuno saves lives everyday with her actions, much the way Ami does as Sailor Mercury. Though of course, the jealous part of her occasionally whispers, Ami Mizuno has only had to cancel four or five outings due to Sailor Mercury's activities.

As her mother's note noted (with teardrops, Ami reminds herself forcefully) she owes Ami for approximately one hundred ninety-three canceled attempts at togetherness.

This is not counting the number of times when both knew ahead of time that they would not be seeing each other, which averages at three times in two weeks.

After her epiphany, Ami clocked their meetings and the time between over the next several months. If she does not go out of her way to make contact, such as by waiting up for her or sticking her head into her mother's room while she catches up on badly needed rest, it is entirely possible for Ami to go an entire week without seeing or speaking with her mother.

And despite the lack of contact there is still _the_ _dam_—there is still the pressure.

Saeko expects her daughter to do well in school. To be the top of the class. To keep her grades up and set the example that everyone else would want to follow. It's rare for her to get particularly pushy about it, as she usually respects Ami's dedication and maturity.

Then again, it's rare for her to feel the _need_ to get pushy about it, since Ami is usually so straight-laced. The straight A honors student. And obviously, if that takes a dip it means that something must be wrong.

Saeko never suggested that Ami stop seeing her friends or cut down on social activity. Nothing that overt. In fact, Ami believes her mother probably doesn't realize what she does or why she does it.

That said, it gives Ami an odd mix of thrill and frustration when her experiment leads her to conclude that yes, she can ensure some contact with her mother by scoring only a 92 or 95 on a test.

Then, when the rest of her friends gather round to ask her if anything is wrong—worried by the same score that got her mother's attention—she finds herself looking into green eyes and swallowing back that boiling, tarry mix of envy and self-loathing.

One day she circuitously suggests and agrees to a movie night at Makoto's un-chaperoned apartment with the rest of the girls. She purposefully neglects to mention to anyone that it's set for the Friday that her mother has a weekend free from work for the first time in three months.

The flash of vindictive satisfaction she feels when she arrives home from the all-nighter to find her mother asleep in her clothes at the kitchen table, with two filled plates in the fridge, is enough to reduce her to a sobbing, incomprehensible wreck. For the first time she can remember Ami vents her feelings through physical violence, tearing one of her canvases into sixteenths.

It doesn't stop her from lying to her mother by claiming she confused the dates, but she feels better when they spend the rest of the day lazily talking and playing games from her childhood until they finally fall asleep together on the couch.

* * *

Ami was surprisingly tough to get started, but since she was the first I figured I'd go the easy route and play with parental problems, which all the senshi seem to have in abundance. Seriously, the one with the happiest family is Usagi, and she gets it rough in other places with bad grades and clumsiness. Maybe getting caught up in the destruction of an empire gave the senshi some bad karma in their next lives?

Next up will be Venus, with a look at how she's managed to remain single in spite of all her attractive characteristics.


	2. Eros and Agape

I don't own Sailor Moon. Or Sailor Venus/V, for that matter.

* * *

In spite of her boy-craziness, idol chasing, and general Love-Goddess obsession, Minako Aino is secretly ashamed of her sexual desires and preferences.

Specifically, her lack thereof.

She isn't certain why this is, since she's never had Ami scan her, and indeed she avoids thinking about it when she can, much less speaking of it. But if Minako had to put it into words she'd have a pretty solid hunch. Ace's curse doomed her to never find love, after all, but is doing that really possible?

(In fact, given that she can't believe that Ace could be able to stop love, even with a dying curse, this makes a lot of sense. When all else has passed, these three shall remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. It's her favorite passage, and if there is any truth to it at all then not even the dying curse of a tragic man could stop love.

She's never really discussed her religion with the others, even Rei. It's just never come up. For a while, after she'd become Sailor V and seen the monsters that it was her duty to stop, she put aside her cross. She couldn't believe that anything like this could be allowed to exist in a world where a higher power could stop it. She left it in England when she came to Japan, but asked her father to mail it to her after Beryl. She wasn't sure what had happened, or how, but she remembered dying, and the extraordinary, all-encompassing _Love_ that had held her until she returned. Maybe what she learned in Sunday school wasn't perfectly accurate, but that didn't mean it wasn't still in some way _True_.)

Still, Ace's curse tried to doom her to never find love, and the two are pretty closely connected.

She wonders how sick you'd have to be to do something like that to a pre-pubescent girl.

And he'd seemed so _nice_ to the very end. Nice, and so _sad_.

Minako had become Sailor V more than a year before Usagi had awoken as Sailor Moon, maybe even more than a year and a half earlier. She was completely pre-pubescent, even with her innocent idolizations. She didn't even get _the_ _Talk_ until two months before she became Sailor Venus, though she thinks that had more to do with her father putting it off as long as he could justify to himself.

The possibility that Ace's dying curse—never to find love for all eternity, and so never have to choose between desire and duty—killed off her sex drive isn't unthinkable. That said, Minako's pretty sure it didn't kill off anything else in her; the plumbing all appears to work fine. Minus the expected dreams and desires, puberty appears to have been completely normal for her. None of her trips to the doctor have ever shown anything unusual, at least.

She also knows that Ace's curse to never find love hasn't killed off her ability to love people Socratically.

{Platonically, Ami corrects her when the girls end up having a conversation about different kinds of love. Theseus, Plato, Socrates, Midas—Minako can never keep the names of those old Roman guys straight.}

Minako still loves her parents, although when they end up screaming at each other she occasionally wonders if they love each other. (She never wonders whether or not they love her, though as Rei brought up once, loving isn't the same as liking.) She still loves her friends, and holds them as dear to her heart as anyone. And when she imagines having children, she can't imagine not loving them with every piece of herself she has.

Of course, the possibility of children has other considerations attached.

Minako wants children. She wants a little girl named Emiko after her grandmother, and an adorable boy named either Kotetsu or Kinro—she hasn't decided which, but no one says she can't have both. She also knows exactly what you have to do to get children.

Unless she decides to adopt or goes for one of those super-sciencey child choices Ami once mentioned, she'll have to have "intimidated relations" with a man to get her bunches of glee. She's had _the Talk_, and the unhelpful sex-ed class in school, so she knows how the whole process is supposed to go. Presumably she will eventually be able to find a man she gets along with well enough to marry, though he'll have to be handsome, and kind, and gallant (and good with kids! If he doesn't know how to change a diaper, then he is going to learn). And she'll doubtless end up _sleeping_ with him several times.

She hopes it won't be too unpleasant.

The first time she found out about the burrs and the butterflies, she triple-checked to make sure no one was playing some sick prank on her. The idea that people actually _do that_, and mess around putting things _down there_, and _like_ it so much…she still doesn't understand why, to be honest.

She once asked Michiru and Haruka about it, since, well, they're _Michiru and Haruka_. For some reason the senshi of the sea was uncomfortable enough to dodge the question and leave the room, but her blonde teammate had no such reservations. At first she'd laughed, but when Minako just squirmed Haruka finally realized no punch-line was coming and got serious.

Since she hadn't mentioned her exact problem the older girl assumed that Minako had a boy she was getting serious with, so the first piece of advice she gave out was to be safe, and all the ways she could be. Failing that, she'd added, Minako could just name it after her. The Love Goddess laughed along and waited for her to get on with it.

After that was a disclaimer that being with a boy was outside of Haruka's area of expertise, though she did know what it was like to be with someone you loved. Then they got down to the peanut butter and jelly of the meeting.

It had been…informative, at least, and Haruka actually blushed once or twice at a few of Minako's questions. The younger blonde still walked away not quite getting it, and her later attempts at "experimentation" would be inconclusive, but she left with the knowledge that she probably wouldn't find the experience a horrible one, and if she did she could always dish the details to her friends and they'd laugh about it for years to come.

Besides, if worst came to worst, Usagi had once informed her that the Luna-pen could do cross-gender transformations, though she'd have to check with Ami if it changed DNA or just appearance. Rei certainly didn't mind blondes, given what Haruka insisted was UST between her and their Princess, and their declaration to Galaxia had implications that even she could pick up on. Or...well, who knew what the future held. She'd burn that bridge when she came to it.

* * *

Has anyone ever thought about how screwed up Ace would have to be to do what he did? He's not got the delusions of grandeur or psychopathy of major villains, but I still think he may be the craziest human we meet in the entire series.

I'm not sure where the thought of Minako as asexual came from, but for the purposes of this snippet it seems more realistic than stopping _love_, since she still obviously loves her friends, etc.

Up next is Mars reflecting on her relationships. Endymion and Moon will come later.


	3. Castigation

Mars was interesting to work out, especially considering her vastly different portrayals between the manga and first anime. Balancing aloofness with temper was a challenge, and I hope I pulled it off. Because really, Rei might have the most to be upset about and hurt by in her personal life; given her father's actions she's got good cause to doubt men and relationships in general and there's probably plenty of anger about what she's had to go through.

I don't own Sailor Moon in any way, shape, form, or part.

* * *

Rei Hino has had to seriously consider that she may tend towards abusive relationships, and the possibility _scares her_ like nothing else in the world.

This is because she is not delusional enough to believe that she would always (if ever) be the victim in such cases.

She covered the cycle of abuse in her school's psychology class, and she thinks she fits the symptoms frighteningly well.

It disgusts her to ever consider it, but Rei Hino may well be her father's daughter.

Takashi Hino is not a soft man. In fact, his daughter has at times compared his heart to a lump of coal. He ignores those he has no use for, stoically holds his ground in the face of those above him, and verbally tears apart those who are unwise or unlucky enough to stumble into his path. Rei's epiphany came during one of her worse beratings of Usagi's bad habits, when she realized a little too late that she had used almost verbatim a few phrases she had heard her father throw around during his rants, both at her or about his political opponent of the month.

It prompted one of the only apologies Rei has ever deigned to utter, which so caught Usagi by surprise that she insisted Ami spend the next half hour scanning Rei for some form of Nega-minion mind-control. It embarrassed Rei enough that she ended up breaking her private resolution to better hold her temper that very evening, to her (absolutely top-secret) shame.

Nor is her princess and first real friend the only relationship where she is frightened of her own actions. An exasperated comment from Yuichirou about how she thinks he can never do anything right prompted another review of her own actions that left Rei upset with herself. She would hate to admit it aloud, but truthfully Yuichirou does a pretty good job at the Shrine.

Not as good as her, obviously, but she has a decade more experience than him, on top of the fact that he has no latent spiritual abilities. It needs to be said that he always tries, and while he may be occasionally inept the work always gets done in the end. He actually makes for a relatively good apprentice, and eases the workload enough that she doesn't feel guilty about having a social life.

She's tried to be nicer to him, including agreeing to one (somewhat awkward) date when he off-handedly asked her out during Golden Week. If nothing else, the look on his face when she told him to be ready by six, and that he'd better have shaved if he valued his life, would have made it a worthwhile endeavor.

And to her pleasant surprise, it wasn't a half-bad experience in the least. The restaurant was classy enough for her tastes without being oppressive, they had the chance to talk about their lives before meeting each other, and the night ended with a walk through the park.

Miraculously, there wasn't even a youma attack to interrupt them halfway through. Perhaps she had been a bit unfair in judging all men to be like her father and Kaido.

Which wasn't to say that it was perfect, either. His eyes kept slipping to her neckline during dinner, and several of his unthinking comments made her want to start off her response by slapping him, and see where her fury took her. In fact, she ended up forgoing the good-night kiss on the cheek she'd planned—not just out of a sense of punishment, but also because she didn't want him to realize that she'd kept from lashing out at him by biting her lip hard enough to draw blood.

Still, the fact that he'd stiffened up when she took his arm or pulled him into a hug was a little upsetting. She was a girl, dammit, and it wasn't like she actually posed a threat to him! Well, Sailor Mars could fry him in under three seconds, but if it ever came down to a fight Yuichirou Kumada was a head taller and fifteen kilograms heavier than Rei Hino, and it wasn't because he was fat; while not ripped, he had a surprising amount of muscle even before he started doing more intensive work at the Shrine.

He was scared of her, and that she might hurt him, and even though Kaido had never hit her and her father only once she knew how children usually reacted to touch when they had been hurt before. His home life wasn't the happiest, she gathered, but there had been none of that ingrained reaction when he first arrived at the temple—it was all her.

She'd been so preoccupied with this problem that she'd turned it into a school report, discussing how abusive relationships were so often played for comedy purposes in entertainment media—Love Hina, Ranma ½, some elements of Naruto and Slayers as well as half a dozen other series she read—and what effects that might be having on their societal perceptions of violence. She got an A+, but no personal closure on the subject, and her temper was not easy to keep reigned in.

She still snapped at Usagi, and she still waved the broom at Yuichirou, but she was aware enough now to catch herself half of the time, and feel repentant whenever she didn't.

Rei also has a new resolution. The next time she sees her father, she's not going to waste time sniping and arguing if she can help it. Instead she's going to ask about his childhood, and her other grandparents, and what it was that made him who he is.

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.

* * *

Realistic? Or at least accurate? She has a lot of defense mechanisms that risk turning into the kind of attack mechanisms she originally defended herself against. Sort of like the porcupines' dilemma. The spines act as a wonderful defense for keeping away enemies, but they keep away friends as well.

Next up is Jupiter and her...well, I had to get a bit creative for her, but I think I pulled it off.


	4. Recollection

I had a lot of trouble writing this-more than any of the others, even the ones I haven't posted yet. Makoto has problems, certainly, but not much I haven't or won't cover with the others. I had to get creative, and decided to dive into the deeper past for her. Makoto has the most specific quirks of the senshi, you know. Her height, her rose earrings, her sempai, her parents and fear of planes, even arguably her cooking, and I also found it interesting that she's the only senshi to specifically use two separate elements.

I didn't really end up using it much, but it's also interesting to me that she was the last of the Inner Senshi to Awake. Venus was the last to join the group, but she was active even before Moon, so Jupiter could almost be called the rookie of the Inners. Granted, it depends on which continuity you follow and how you interpret time as passing, but...there's a lot to play with about Jupiter (and let's not get into the inner/outer planet debate).

I don't own Sailor Moon or any of the characters, although I'd love to get on the inside of Crystal's production.

* * *

Makoto does not know _for certain_ that she has the clearest memories of the Silver Millenium out of all the Inners (and the Outers, excluding Setsuna), but it's fair to say that she deeply wishes she didn't.

She spent a long time ignorant of her knowledge of the past after assuming the mantle of a sailor senshi—it wasn't until after the defeat of Wiseman and his followers that the realization hit her. They had gathered at the shrine and the subject of past enemies and battles had come up. Minako had volunteered information on her battles in England, from her awakening until that fateful night with Ace, and then her side of her appearance in Japan to meet the others. In turn, each of the others had volunteered their own experiences awakening to destiny, as well as some stories of battle fought without the whole team.

Usagi's lone fight against Morga in the jewelry store had gotten a mild teasing for her lackluster performance as even she laughed at her inexperience. Ami's shock and confusion in the cram school until she had raised her pen and everything "clicked into place" got the appropriate awws from the listeners. Rei's fury at the violation of the bus incident was still laced through her voice even after so much time had passed. And after Makoto had related her own story, a name she wasn't quite familiar with had popped into conversation.

Nephrite.

Jadeite was mentioned as well, accompanied by the grinding of Rei's teeth, but Nephrite was the name that rang in Makoto's mind, and she asked to hear more about fighting against him. Ami complied, even bringing up a recording on her Mercury computer, and those words slipped out of her mouth before Makoto realized what she was saying.

_"Hey, he looks just like my old sempai."_

The other girls found this hilarious, and it took several minutes for the laughter to fade. After all, by this point they all knew that Makoto kept that line as a running joke, comparing everyone she saw to the mysterious boy in her past. Makoto found it horrifying. She had been dead serious. He was tall, had long, dark hair, and broad shoulders.

Just like almost every guy she had been seriously attracted to. Ever.

Just like the man she had (literally) dreamed of meeting and falling in love with.

When Makoto was a girl, she'd had dreams of being a princess. This was before her growth spurt had her towering over everyone, and she still wore frilly dresses and rode piggyback on her father broad shoulders. She dreamed of charming princes, and balls, and nights in the garden staring at the stars. Her father had laughed when she turned these dreams into a story and told them to him at bedtime, his mustache ticking her cheek as he kissed her good night.

If what she knew now was right, it cast a shadow on all of those happy days. She wasn't sure whose fault that was—Queen Serenity or Luna or Beryl or even herself—but it was safe to say that forgiveness wasn't happening any time soon.

Meeting Hisui had been one of the bigger shocks of her life up to that point. They'd met when he picked her up at an ice-skating rink—literally, as she'd slipped and fallen—and realized they went to the same school. An afternoon of talking as he showed her the ropes ended when her father had come to pick her up. The two had shaken hands and exchanged a few polite words, and when she got home she asked her mother to show her how to make a bentō.

She'd approached him the next day, blushing and stammering when she handed her gift over, and he'd accepted with the most charming smile when she said it was as a thank you for the previous day's lesson. She'd asked if he could do it again some time, and they'd discussed skating, lesson times, and other inane things as they walked home together.

She'd thought it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, and was overjoyed that he didn't seem to mind the more than two years age gap.

Three weeks later she discovered that he'd thought he was just being a nice mentor, when he introduced Makoto to his girlfriend from a nearby school, who was shorter, slimmer, and far more soft-spoken. Makoto had gone home, cried her eyes out, and with her mother's help had begun her habit of cooking when she was upset, as the two of them worked through almost twenty pages of a cookbook in one evening. Her father had passed on the rose earrings that had once belonged to his mother, assured her that yes, she was a beautiful young woman who would undoubtedly find love, and roped her into helping him start packing for the upcoming trip.

Since she still had school, the plan was for her parents to fly ahead and help set up her cousin's wedding in the USA, and Makoto would follow with her grandmother when Spring Break began.

There were 178 passengers on her parents' flight across the ocean. 107 of them were successfully evacuated. Her mother was not one of them, and her father passed away in the hospital before Makoto had heard there was an accident.

Most of the time immediately afterwards she's blocked out of her memory. She remembers that she cried herself to sleep that one night, but never any other time. She remembers that she cooked until she ran her aunt's kitchen out of ingredients. She remembers that she never once removed her earrings: not for bed, not to bathe, and not for the funeral. But that time feels empty, as though all the colors are bleached out and the voices muffled.

Speaking of her earrings, despite her decision to wear them for as much of her life as could, she remembers one notable time that she _did_ remove them, and had wondered if she was ever going to put them back on.

Ami had decoded some of the Mercury Computer's scrambled, degraded files and found a photo collection of them all from the Silver Millennium. This had, naturally, been a source of much excitement. And as they were all examining the photos for clues about their past lives, Makoto had noticed a very familiar pair of rose earrings. And she _remembered_.

They'd been an anniversary gift from _that man_, and she'd been wearing them the night of the ball that Beryl crashed. She'd been wearing them when she died. She wondered what had happened to them after that—and to their bodies, for that matter. She wondered why it mattered, and why she was wondering too, but mostly about what had happened after the end, but before the new beginning.

Makoto quietly skipped past that picture before any of the others saw, and when she went home she took off the earrings and left them on the kitchen table as she cooked for an hour. They stayed there when she went to bed, and in the morning, after a night of uneasy dreams and half-rememberings, she threw a tantrum and threw them against the wall in a fit of temper.

And when she saw that she'd broken one of them, two of the petals had chipped off entirely, she'd been completely horrified. A hurried call to Usagi had secured Naru's phone number, and a second call assured her that the Osa-P did repairs as wells as sales, and she'd been sprinting over there in a panic when she'd got the call about the daemon.

Whatever she said when she'd heard the news had made several women cover their kids' ears and shoot her dirty looks, but Makoto was too busy reversing direction and looking for an alley to care at the time. When she finally de-transformed after a fight and an hour later, she was horrified to find her pockets empty. The realization that her earrings were back in her ears, both whole and unmarked, left her unsettled, which was in some way even worse.

She went back home and looked at herself in the mirror. Then, never taking her eyes off her reflection, she transformed and stared Sailor Jupiter in the eye. What she saw…

_Strength_ and _Beauty_—a young woman who stood above the crowd in more ways than one, as admired for her force of will and confidence as she was for her effortless attractiveness

_Betrayal_—snarled imprecations becoming soft words spoken in the shadows of tree leaves becoming touches on the grass and whispers on silk becoming joyous shouts and announcements becoming screams of suffering, sadness, and fear

_Hope_—certainty of purpose as she spoke an oath with her heart and soul, the light of love that lifted her higher than imagined until she saw futures laid out before her, ash and dust scattered before her as her enemies fell in droves until Silver light burned away darkness, color, and sound

_Righteous Fury_—as she felt the stab of betrayal in her breast, hot anger lent violent power to her stable strength, twisting her beauty from guardian angel to avenger, stoking the light of defiance brighter as she rent the dark asunder, no matter what she saw there even enemies and horrors and bodies and friends and failure and it wasn't fair it wasn't fair IT WASN'T FAIR

She didn't realize she'd smashed her fist into the mirror until some time after it had happened. Her transformation protected her from the broken glass, but picking it up and throwing it away took an annoying amount of time. Still, it kept her hands and thoughts too busy for anything else while it lasted.

After, she once more started cooking, and only realized that it was a dish that she'd _remembered_ when she realized that the ingredient she needed no longer existed. She spent five minutes staring blankly at her hands, and another five washing them as thoroughly as she could manage. Then she returned to the kitchen, substituted in cherries, and brought the resultant pastries to the next study session.

She bought a new mirror, wore her earrings proudly, chased after whichever guy caught her eye, and smoked only the occasional cigarette.

She's going to live in the present, thank you very much, and you'll have to drag her out of it at your own risk.

* * *

I admit, this particular one was inspired partly by Jet Wolf's story Hard to Break (a funny one-shot about Makoto quitting smoking). Dying has to be a pretty traumatic experience, after all, let alone more than once. It's a bit more disjointed than I'd like, but it was tough to write so I'm not scrapping it to start again.

If you haven't noticed, I'm not using only the manga or first anime, but pulling bits that could fit into either/both. The anime never covers whether the senshi and shittennou were in relationships, so implying that Nephrite gave them to her in their first lifetime is safe. For that matter, the manga never confirms any relationships between the groups, either, I'm pretty sure. It was mostly concept art work and stuff that gave that inspiration. But it's interesting and it fits the themes so everyone runs with it.

Next up is Saturn reflecting on the nature of nightmares, monsters, and hope.


	5. Traum

The Death Busters may be a bit of a cop-out, but they are the most obvious and influential cause of strife in her life. My main reservations about this chapter are for continuity reasons. I've mostly tried to keep it neutral enough that this could be either the manga or the original anime (I like manga characters better, but anime has bigger/longer plots) but this puts it firmly in the anime. If there are any objection, I'm just declaring author fiat, so I hope it doesn't detract from the quality of the story.

I don't own Sailor Moon, in whole or in part.

* * *

Hotaru Tomoe still has moments when she will look into a mirror and see Mistress Nine staring back at her. While unsettling and momentarily startling, she would not describe such incidents as "frightening," exactly. Yes, she will see something disturbing and flinch away, but when she flinches the image disappears. Mistress Nine does not look afraid, even in hallucinations, and for Hotaru's reflection to show fear banishes her as surely as Saturn did.

Which may be a little ironic, since Sailor Saturn's awakening was the only time where Mistress Nine did show fear to Hotaru's knowledge, even if she could not see her own face display those feelings. The Silence had banished the demon more completely than a light banished the dark.

Hotaru likes collecting lamps for very good reason.

But there are times—in her nightmares—where the sight of Mistress Nine does frighten her. Badly. She's never told the specifics to her parents; just saying Mistress Nine is enough. They comfort her, and assure her that the monster can't hurt her anymore.

Hotaru knows that. She knows it, and she _knows it_ as well. That's why her nightmares are so frightening.

In her dreams, she stares into a mirror, and sees Mistress Nine looking back at her. But it is only her reflection that flinches back. She does not. Instead, Hotaru grips the Silence Glaive tighter and stalks through the mirror as Mistress Nine turns and runs. She can feel the grin stretch across her face, peeling back her lips to bare her teeth and gums. In the dream she sweeps after her prey, unstoppable as a tornado or tidal wave.

The Silence is a force of nature, and not bound by human will or halted by their actions.

The chase could continue for any amount of time—a minute or an hour, it's all the same in dreams—but it inevitably ends the same way. Exhausted, Mistress Nine is sprawled on the shadowy not-ground of this world without walls, sky, or sunlight.

She (or should it be it?) is facing Hotaru and desperately tries to scrabble away from the approaching end without turning away. It is no use.

A few more steps bring her before her fallen enemy, and Hotaru holds her in place by placing a single one of Sailor Saturn's elegant boots on her stomach.

Then she raises her scythe, and brings it down end the world. Well, to end one world. Each person lives in a world of their own, Setsuna-mama said once, and they cannot tell the difference between the end of that world, and the end of all worlds.

When Mistress Nine is no more, Hotaru looks up. Though she has only been there once in real life, it is an all too familiar vista. She and Setsuna-mama are facing Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa, and Galaxia behind them.

Correction: she and Sailor Pluto are facing down Sailors Neptune and Uranus, and Galaxia behind them.

Hotaru doesn't hate or resent her Mama and Papa for what they did then. She sort of pities them, and she doesn't believe she will ever forget about it, but for the most part she has forgiven them.

She knew what she was getting into when she went, after all.

She's never told them, and she doesn't think Setsuna-mama has either, but Setsuna-mama had actually broken one of her big rules and told Hotaru about the near future before it happened. She'd told Hotaru that her Mama and Papa had discussed if it was possible to beat Galaxia with the power they had now, and that in order to spare the Princess and other innocents, they'd agreed to fake turning traitor if the opportunity arose.

Setsuna had warned Hotaru that certain events and circumstances made it likely that Galaxia would have the opportunity to force Uranus and Neptune to kill their teammates as proof of loyalty.

Setsuna had told Hotaru that things didn't have to happen that way, and that there was something Hotaru could choose to do that would mean only she, Pluto, would face down their falsely traitorous family and fall.

Hotaru asked if her Mama and Papa's plan would work. Setsuna-mama said she couldn't answer that, but Hotaru guessed more that she didn't know for certain; it might succeed.

Hotaru asked why Setsuna-mama was telling her this, if it was against the rules. Setsuna-mama told her that this was more important than rules: this was family.

Hotaru asked what would have happened if Setsuna-mama hadn't told her this, and Setsuna-mama answered that the future she described was almost certainly assured. Hotaru asked what would happen if that future didn't happen, and Setsuna-mama had hesitated long enough before answering to tell Hotaru that no matter Setsuna-mama said, the truth was that she wasn't certain.

This was more important than rules, to Setsuna-mama. This was family.

Hotaru had seen what horrors and madness people would embrace for the sake of family. It had already cost her one childhood with her parents.

Hotaru knew she should have died fighting Pharaoh 90, and that according to Silver Millennium law she should be held in stasis somewhere where her power couldn't be a threat.

Everything after she first dropped her Glaive was, from one point of view, a miracle of borrowed time; it was a chance to live life like countless other people, and to serve beside her fellow senshi

She told Setsuna-mama to let the future occur, and refused to budge on the subject.

And when that future came to be, she had not raised a single-finger in anger or self-defense, and had only hoped for two things: that it would be fast, and that Uranus and Neptune would make the most of their opportunity and succeed.

She's decided to look at this particular glass as half-full.

But that was what happened in life. In dream, she raises a Silent Wall around the two of them. The dream stops paying attention to her opponents as Sailor Pluto—no, it's become Setsuna-mama now—turns to her in surprise.

The Silence Glaive dips its tip into her sternum, and then her scythe comes down.

There is no blood or body, thankfully—the Silence is a cleansing death, not the power of brutality or violence—and she turns back to Sailors Uranus and Neptune.

The look neither surprised nor upset, merely resolved. It is the way they looked back when fighting the Deathbusters. She stalks towards them the way she did Mistress Nine, and they respond with fight, not flight.

The spells don't even touch her, and her targets do not waver until she is within arm's reach. Her arm's reach.

The Silence Glaive is very sharp. When it falls, it cuts effortlessly, and two more heartbeats still.

Only now does Galaxia show interest in her, and vice-versa. She stands from her shining throne and extends one hand, palm up. A gesture of companionship.

But Galaxia's heart still beats, her throat sings, her soul hums, and the Silence will not tolerate that.

As Hotaru approaches—and it is Hotaru, wielding the Glaive but not wearing the fuku of a senshi—Galaxia turns her hand and gathers the shimmering, burning power of a between her fingers.

Just because the Silence has only ever been used on planets does not mean it should not be able to extinguish starsong.

In real life there should be no reasonable way for Saturn to defeat Galaxia. In dream the confusion at being countered still Galaxia's hand long enough for the scythe to touch her throat and Silence her voice.

The throne is composed of clear glass and black stone, and Hotaru takes her place on it calmly. Nothing can touch her while she is wrapped in Silence. She can't even affect herself.

Usagi is standing in front of her. The stairs are gone and Usagi is standing in front of her on the same level, as an equal. Not Princess Serenity or Sailor Moon, but the Usagi who brought Chibi-Usa to the park and smiled at her friend. There is no judgment or anger in her eyes. There is no confusion or uncertainty either.

There is only a disappointed, accepting sadness.

The Silence does not care. She holds the Ginzuisho cupped in her hands. Its light shines brighter and cleaner than any star Galaxia could imagine.

The Silence Glaive's tip taps against it gently. Usagi does not flinch as the light is instantly out. Perhaps the crystal shatters, or perhaps it fades away from existence. Hotaru doesn't know. The dream doesn't show her.

All she sees is the gentle lullaby of the soul in front of her. The scythe comes down.

With Usagi gone, she sees the other senshi were assembled behind her. Mamoru stands in the middle with Chibi-Usa in his arms.

Chibi-Usa.

And Usagi is-

Time paradox wipes away her friend before she can finish the thought. There is only surprise at a song ending without her involvement.

Curiously, furiously, she stalks forward. Mamoru does not move, nor does he appear to make any effort at staying still. If she could not hear his unique hum Hotaru would mistake him for a mannequin.

She touches the Glaive to his brow, and brings the scythe down.

None of the other senshi react. Nor do any of the other people scattered around them. Surrounding them, distant and blurry, their faint songs barely whispers, but undeniably present, are people. Countless people. The People of the world. Perhaps the people of all worlds.

Hotaru touches her glaive to the sky. Silence falls.

And it is at this point that she wakes up screaming. Every time, no matter how many times she's gone through the dream, no matter how upset she may actually be, Hotaru always screams at the top of her lungs.

She shrieks. She howls. She bawls, she wails, and she cries until she finally feels her mama's warm arms around her.

Anything to make noise until someone is close enough to hear a heartbeat.

It is always Setsuna-mama who gets to her first, though Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa are always hot on her heels. This is true even on nights where Setsuna was home, and Hotaru knows that her mama may be using the Gates to cheat a little bit.

She probably feels guilty about Galaxia, even if it was Hotaru's choice.

And her other Mama and Papa probably feel worse. They've never apologized out loud, but actions speak louder than words according to Setsuna-mama, and to Hotaru a silence can be an answer all of its own.

And speaking of Silence, after another nightmare she brings up the fight with the Death Busters to her parents. There's the slightest flinch, but she only ask what some of the fights were like, and how they were able to fight alone, and she coaxes and guilts them into discussing it.

Then, at the end, she brings up their willingness to kill her in defense of the world, and flash of…something, passes through their eyes. Regret, disdain, and disgust (all directed inward, she can tell) are not nearly strong enough to describe what she sees. But that isn't the answer she wants, as glad as it makes her.

"I just wanted you two to know, that if it ever happens again and it looks like I'm-"

_"Absolutely not!_" Haruka shouts the moment, and Hotaru cringes back. It is the loudest her Papa has ever raised her voice at her. Michiru-mama's face has gone drawn and pales, and she utters a single word as she slowly shakes her head.

"_Never_," her mama vows.

Setsuna-mama, who's supposed to be at the Time Gates right now, sticks her head through the kitchen door and adds, "I can't stay for long, but I whole-heartedly agree with both of them," before she pulls back and vanishes again.

"If it's a choice between me or everyone, I want-" Hotaru tries to argue back, trying to make them understand.

**"No,"** they say simultaneously. Her Papa stands, and are those tears in her eyes?

"I am not having this conversation," Haruka-papa says and stalks out to the garage. Furious but helpless Hotaru turns pleadingly to Michiru-mama.

"But-"

"We chose the world once before," Michiru-mama states, referring to the Galaxia incident for the first time. "It wasn't worth it, and we both agreed: Never Again." The conversation is over, and Hotaru is now more worried than when it started.

Mistress Nine was capable of fending off all of the other senshi combined, yet Sailor Saturn's mere awakening stopped her cold. If Saturn ever loses control, who could stop the Silence?

She goes to ask for advice.

"I need to borrow something, wait a minute please," Usagi tells her after she finishes explaining. There was no judgment in her eyes, and Hotaru wishes otherwise. Worry and sorrow, yes but no condemnation or fury.

She wishes her dream were not so true to life.

"I _knew_ he had to have one of these!"

Usagi returns from her and Mamoru's bedroom (they moved in together less than two months ago) with a stethoscope proudly on display. "Every med student has to have one. It's tradition." This explanation leaves Hotaru with new questions in addition to the unanswered old ones. Usagi puts the one side in Hotaru's ears and holds the other to her own chest. "Hear anything?"

"…yes…"

"And you think the Silence will stop this?"

"Yes!" she snapped at her future Queen, frustrated. It sounds a little funny when she puts it like that, but this is _serious_.

"Alright. Well if you can't believe that this will stop the Silence, then I want you to know that I _know_ that _this_," she presses the metal to Hotaru's chest, "is something the Silence can _never_ stop."

Hotaru opens her mouth to object, and gets a _look_ that stills her voice. They stay like that, Hotaru hearing her own pulse and breath, for some length of time. She's not sure how long. Finally, Usagi says ten words to her that sound like she's quoting something from a book, but they're still enough to change Hotaru's life.

Then they share a smile, and Hotaru leaves the apartment. That night, she sneaks downstairs after everyone else is asleep and steals a small package from the gardening box in the garage. Then she steps into her backyard and transforms.

Sailor Saturn raises her weapon high to the sky. Her breath is tight in her chest, but she is sure of herself.

The Silence Glaive drops.

The world stills as silence falls, and for an instant in an eternity Hotaru worries that she made a mistake.

The pounding of own pulse in her head reminds her to breathe again, and the sounds of night—insects, the breeze, the distant sound of cars in a city that never fully sleeps—flow back into her ears.

She raises her weapon from the ground. The world still exists. Nothing has died. Only a small gouge in the soil shows that anything ever happened.

Sailor Saturn kneels down and places a single seed from the pack into the earth. Then she blesses it with ten words, returns to her bed.

_"When you sing a song, there's silence before and after."_

* * *

I like ending these on a hopeful note after whatever angst my story puts you through, and I think I got it well. Usagi might be a bit wiser than is usual, but this is post-Galaxia and she's old enough to be cohabiting, so I think it's justified.

Also, I've only just realized that the gas giant planet chapters also happen to be the largest. Not intentional, but an amusing aside, ne?

Up next is Uranus reflecting on guilt and responsibility.

P.S. Regarding the title, the root for the modern word "dream" is the German word "Traum". Like Trauma.


End file.
